With Japan entering the new month with a higher sales tax, people are beginning to feel the squeeze. In addition, April is the time of year when many people make big changes in their lives such as moving out on their own. This is already an expensive time made even more so by the economic climate.

One such person is Omocoro writer ARuFa. He feels that he has successfully come up with a way to reduce your water bill drastically by taking baths that would only cost 0.0000076 yen (US$0.000000075). This is his story.

Education is important, especially in urban cities today where paper qualifications are often the factor that determines whether you get a job, and how much you get paid for that job. Knowing that education plays a crucial part in their children’s future, many parents work hard and invest a large portion of their savings in their children’s education. Everybody works hard, but some just have it a little harder than the rest.

A couple in Hengyang, China, collect and recycle plastic materials for a living, handling over 180kg of plastics a day in order to see their sons through college. That’s more than 7,000 bottles each day!

During these sweltering summer days it’s not unusual to down more than a few plastic bottles of water, pop, or juice. And surely with all that drinking you’re bound to accumulate a pile of empty plastic bottles.

Burden by all of these bottles, collapsing them to a convenient size for recycling can be an energy and time draining chore. That’s why the folks at Yahoo! R25 wanted to share an effortless way to break your plastic bottles down to size.

RocketNews’ ever faithful correspondent, Kuzo, stumbled upon a new type of drink while traveling abroad. The bottle is divided down the middle with one side containing 100% orange juice and the other holding grape juice.

The cap has two separate spouts and lids, so if you want a sweet treat of grape juice just do that side. If you feel a cold coming on then go the other way for a vitamin C boost.

Or if you want to really take a walk on the wild side, flip them both up for a very loosely mixed orange/grape blend.